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Command and Conquer Generals natively ported to macOS, iPhone, iPad using Fable

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Re: Command and Conquer Generals natively ported to macOS, iPhone, iPad using Fable

#281

Post by manmal »

smejmoon wrote: post #186
manmal wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d recommend to instead write a de-slop skill that instructs to launch a sub agent with fresh context, and analyze for such phrases in the new commits, and remove those. Find -> fix just works better than preemptive instructions, in my experience. And if you manage to do this automatically before committing, you’ve built the backpressure everybody is talking about.

Can you point to some examples? Also I wonder if this needs to be very model/harness specific? Like even model version, subversion. And probably that should be run in different harness or with custom system prompt? Since they introduce quirks and glitches as well. (somehow this motivated me to resurrect HN account)

I think you’re probably overthinking it. The same model will in my experience find errors in the same thing it just generated. I think reviewing is a totally different place in latent space, than implementing. Anyhow, it works well for me.

I often tell codex to launch a subagent without prior context to „remove BS phrases and make the prose sound more natural and higher readability“. That‘s usually enough to get better results.

Re: Command and Conquer Generals natively ported to macOS, iPhone, iPad using Fable

#282

Post by lelandfe »

risyachka wrote: post #244
lelandfe wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it was able to get a macOS port of a 20 year old game to run on iOS" still very cool, and sci fi not long ago

Its not 20 years old, GeneralsX was updated like a day ago. So the game in question is very modern and cross platform.

> a macOS port of a 20 year old game

GeneralsX is the macOS port. It ported a 20 year old game.

Re: Command and Conquer Generals natively ported to macOS, iPhone, iPad using Fable

#283

Post by lukasco »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #240
tangenter wrote: post #162

I think the next 10 years or so are going to see a chucklefuck of games reversed thanks to LLMs, which can easily pattern match and operate on contrivedely optimized assembly and output reasonably accurate C/C++ code. I’m one of many right now using Ghidra + LLM workflow. It’s doing the thing it needs to and I’ve helped several communities revive and port their games this way. It is a huge time saver. While I’d perso…

The mild alarm for me is that this won't be limited to just games. I've spent almost 30 years building applications for the web. I've been switching my attention to different models of distribution in part because I see a desire for people to not be paying monthly seat subscriptions, but also because it can simplify my own operations - I want to move to a solo indie dev model, and giving you an executable you run mea…

This is the big question! Is it really sensible to distribute locally running software at all? Maybe this leads to the locked down Mac App Store (and Windows I'm sure)? Apple's been wanting to lock down the Mac for ages, and this might be what makes people accept it.

Re: Command and Conquer Generals natively ported to macOS, iPhone, iPad using Fable

#284

Post by meowface »

hatefulheart wrote: post #174
meowface wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree Claude Code is seemingly (currently) not very well-engineered but I think you may be moderately underestimating how complicated it is/necessarily has to be.

What are those complications? Last I heard Claude Code devs were trying to compare their app to a game engine or rendering system. This was summarily ridiculed. Are you saying that writing a game engine is easier than writing Claude Code?

There are multiple levels to the irrelevance of your reply.

Re: Command and Conquer Generals natively ported to macOS, iPhone, iPad using Fable

#285

Post by hatefulheart »

meowface wrote: post #284
hatefulheart wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are those complications? Last I heard Claude Code devs were trying to compare their app to a game engine or rendering system. This was summarily ridiculed. Are you saying that writing a game engine is easier than writing Claude Code?

There are multiple levels to the irrelevance of your reply.

The irony!

Re: Command and Conquer Generals natively ported to macOS, iPhone, iPad using Fable

#286

Post by ben_w »

daveguy wrote: post #279
ben_w wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few ever cared. Find one non-pedant who would object to the personification that follows: "The evening settled over the city, drawing the light out of the streets one corner at a time. Windows blinked awake with lamplight, and the wind moved through the alleys restlessly, leaves brushing against walls before gathering themselves along the pavement. In the distance, the river kept its steady argument with the stone em…

Or it's just plagiarism, eg "windows blinked awake": https://web.archive.org/web/20190825132048/https://patriciae... See also "wind moved restlessly", "weather became angry". And raging storm? I mean come on... I won't even put that last one in quotes. And like a sibling reply pointed out, personificiation is not the same as anthropomophism. Nor is plagiarized personification. It has no inner thoughts, and no fondnes…

> Or it's just plagiarism, eg "windows blinked awake":

> https://web.archive.org/web/20190825132048/https://patriciae...

> See also "wind moved restlessly", "weather became angry". And raging storm? I mean come on... I won't even put that last one in quotes.

What's your point here?

Mine is: Nobody seriously objects to phrases such as these. So for me, in this case: the more cliché, the better.

Or another way, you were previously objecting to a human using "typical English" to describe an LLM's failure to use "typical English".

> personificiation is not the same as anthropomophism

An unimportant though technically correct statement. In both my example and the comment from xg15 that you previously objected to, "personificiation" is the correct term.

While anthropomorphisation treats a thing as a person, personificiation describes a thing with person-like qualities or actions, like calling an LLM "fond": https://hearth.sh/guides/anthropomorphism-vs-personification

LLMs do anthropomorphise themselves, though, with their linguistic selections. (Or, as a normal person would call them, "linguistic choices").

Re: Command and Conquer Generals natively ported to macOS, iPhone, iPad using Fable

#287

Post by gwerbin »

notpushkin wrote: post #170
gwerbin wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's working for them is having a huge amount of resources and very good people to design a cutting edge agent harness, RLHF the hell out of their models, and build out a tremendous amount of inference capacity. I'm sure their process for making code changes in any of their client apps is very fast, but a TUI built around a chatbot is also not a particularly complicated application. So yes it's working for them, bu…

They’re not talking about the chatbot TUI. The chatbot TUI was and is in JavaScript. They’ve ported the JavaScript runtime .

Yes, and it's working for them, but it's not their core competency nor does it have much to do with the actual product that people pay them for (apart from being a source of bugs to avoid), so the fact that it's working for Anthropic doesn't necessarily imply that it's actually a good idea in general. It's working for them, with emphasis on for them. Or it's actually a demo of the future and it would work for anyone, who's to say? There's no doubt that AI (and especially Claude as industry leader) helps you carry out significantly more complicated side quests than in the past, in part by enabling that "recklessness" with surprisingly little risk. Maybe an exhaustive enough test suite is really all you need. But Anthropic is not in a position to demonstrate that as the universal future of all things, not just side quests.

Re: Command and Conquer Generals natively ported to macOS, iPhone, iPad using Fable

#288

Post by nottorp »

tangenter wrote: post #182
gf263 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope we get Skyblivion soon

Completely unrelated but I find it amusing in a good way that Oblivion is recognized more favorably now. I never understood the disregard for it (horse armor nonsense aside), as it has a very compelling, unique atmosphere and a not so terrible storyline/writing.

> unique atmosphere

You can only say unique atmosphere if you haven't played Morrowind :)

Add to that the level scaling stuff that simply kills any sense of progression.

Btw did you know that the optimal for Oblivion's main storyline is to not level at all, or at best level to 4? Because otherwise the enemies level scale but the NPC you're supposed to protect doesn't.

Re: Command and Conquer Generals natively ported to macOS, iPhone, iPad using Fable

#289

Post by munksbeer »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #270
tangenter wrote: post #162

I think the next 10 years or so are going to see a chucklefuck of games reversed thanks to LLMs, which can easily pattern match and operate on contrivedely optimized assembly and output reasonably accurate C/C++ code. I’m one of many right now using Ghidra + LLM workflow. It’s doing the thing it needs to and I’ve helped several communities revive and port their games this way. It is a huge time saver. While I’d perso…

The games industry will push us even harder toward streaming everything.

For what it's worth, I love GeForce Now. I no longer need to maintain a gaming PC, find somewhere to keep it, etc. I was so sceptical that streaming games could work but it does, and it is amazing.

Re: Command and Conquer Generals natively ported to macOS, iPhone, iPad using Fable

#290

Post by flohofwoe »

taormina wrote: post #277
flohofwoe wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HN title makes it sound like Fable did the port from the original code base to macOS and iOS, but this is very wrong (the project's readme does a much better job). It's merely enhanching an existing macOS version to also run on iOS, which tbh is very trivial and not at all impressive for any LLM. The actually important work (of making the original code release portable and then create Linux and macOS ports) had a…

HN titles are not the best. Have you ported a desktop title to mobile? It is NOT trivial. This is the next step in a continuing chain of work that builds upon the next and next person's work, but this is not a trivial step. If it was so trivial, why hadn't it already been done? The jump to Apple Silicon is net-new work, and they aren't trying to pretend they did more than they did. > This fork — the iOS/iPadOS port (…

> Have you ported a desktop title to mobile? It is NOT trivial.

I created and maintain a cross-platform wrapper library (several over the decades actually) which among other platforms supports macOS and iOS, so I have an idea what's involved.

This is a game that renders its own UI, it only needs to use AppKit/UIKit for creating the application window, and from then on hand off all rendering to Metal. When you already have working 'Metal-heavy' macOS code, porting to iOS is indeed trivial these days, the Apple-specific code is at least 90% identical between macOS and iOS.

The main difference is mouse input vs touch input, but that's also not a big deal for an RTS since it only needs 'click', 'zoom', 'pan' and 'dragbox-select'.

> If it was so trivial, why hadn't it already been done?

Because maybe the author of the original Linux+macOS port simply didn't care about iOS or didn't want to put up with the messy iOS development workflow in Xcode?

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